When I first taught perception checking I would give the lecture and simply turn students loose on the perception checking assignments. That’s when I learned how powerful a communication tool perception checking can be.

Shakespearean for “Cheater, cheater, pumpkin eater!”

The case of the woman who wasn’t prepared for her perception to be correct

A student asked me if it was okay not to share the details of her perception check in her paper.

I asked why.

She said the perception check confirmed one of her perceptions about her husband. She had tears in her eyes.

She didn’t want to share the details of what she learned from her perception check with me. It was too personal.

She never provided me with the details, but my perception is her perception check revealed her husband was cheating on her.

Has something like this ever happened to you?

Mandi walks to class one morning thinking what a great day it is. She sits down in the classroom and takes a sip of her perfectly flavored latte.

As she pulls out her books, she mentally congratulates herself for taking the time to talk to the professor. After their conversation, Mandi got a much clearer idea what the assignment was about. So, instead of dreading writing the paper, she hammered it out in 30 minutes. Mandi felt so confident she uploaded it to Canvas a day before it was due.

Now she’s looking forward to spending the weekend with friends but remembers she needs to send her roommates a text to remind them she’ll be out of town.

That’s when Sam sits down next to her, slams his textbook on the table and says “Why are you mad at me?”

Do you see the horse in this picture? If you can’t, well, you’re dumb.

It’s a picture of a horse. Trust me. All you have to do is turn your head to the right and you’ll see it. See. See how dumb you were?

Okay, I know you’re not dumb. You just didn’t perceive the picture the same way I did. That’s the tricky thing about perception. What may be true for me, may not be true for you.

To say someone’s perception is wrong is, well, just plain wrong. Each of us perceive things differently. Our perceptions influence which truths we see. Understanding how we form our perceptions can help us better understand how we communication and how people communicate with us.

Before we can start “shooting” news we need to know what news is. Generally, a picture of the family cat is NOT news. Unless the family cat kept mowing and clawing at the neighbor’s door and that woke them up so they got out of the house before it burned down to the ground. Now your family cat IS newsworthy!

There really isn’t a magic formula for determining what news is. I wish! If there were, I’d bottle it up, sell it for a hefty price and retire someplace where temperatures are in the low 80s and bare-chested men bring me drinks with little umbrellas in them all day long. (I can dream, can’t I?)

Which stories should we cover? What story leads the newscast? What story goes above the fold? Which story goes below the fold or on page 3? Do we commit a reporter and a photographers to this story? Or do we commit the entire news team?

These are all tough questions, with a lot of variables you must factor in. But… there are some guidelines to help us determine what is NOT newsworthy, what is newsworthy, and just how newsworthy a story is. You’ll find various versions of these guidelines around the business, but they are generally combinations or more precise divisions of these seven qualities or factors.